there could be broader charges. there are civil lawsuits that are piling up against penn state by the victims of jerry sandusky. there could be more victims who step forward. all that could cost this institution tens, countless millions of dollars. so the short fallout will continue. the freeh report is so detailed it lays out what some believes is a path for more criminal indictment, civil penalties, you name it. between, really damning report that in so many ways places so much blame at penn state as an institution not just a football program but as an institution of higher learning. >> all right. so truly troubling things in this report and still unfolding. thank you, ron, for that update. so, i want to bring to the table here, there's so much that's horrific and awful in this report but as ron just said part of what's most horrific is not only was there a cover-up but that there was actually an

enabling of sandusky's continued behavior. from the report they said that the continued access that was provide to sandusky was the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims. we're looking at the role of joe paterno in all of this. and what's incredibly troubling is paterno knew about the '98 investigation of sandusky when mcqueary came to him describing the incident that he had seen in the shower and nothing was done even though he already knew about that. curley, schultz and spanier, who are the other three that are talked about in this report had actually come up with a plan of action in response to that mcqueary incident that included going to the authorities and after meeting with joe paterno they decided that the quote-unquote more humane thing to do would be to engaging this cover-up. i mean, what's with these men

covering up for each other? >> yeah. as a woman, you know, following this case looking at it, it just strikes me that had a woman been privy toni of this information at any time this would not have gone on as long as it did and i'm not indicting all of men but clearly men cover for men and whether you're looking at some of the catholic church abuses, there's, you know, horace mann at the new york prep school where these things have happened where men are given the job of covering for other men. actually i was reading an interesting blog post this week, i think it's from last week but just read it this week in the philly post. he went to penn state. he talks about this idea and why men don't expose other men in these situations and frankly they are just too uncomfortable. what he says and i want to warn anyone with kids watching.

he says if i can't listen to the abuse, if i can't hear the horrific details of bloody underwear that came from sandusky anally raping a boy because it makes me uncomfortable then how i can expect someone else to speak up? i can't. and that's not a penn state problem, that's my problem. so clearly, there's sort of a culture and a code around men that makes it very difficult for them to hear these details, acknowledge these details, and then share these details with other people. >> i think that's totally right from a dynamic. the football coach becoming the most powerful member of the university society. so when the president and provost ask joe pa can we do this, should we do this, he says no. they listen to him. you don't build statues for people who are alive. i want to put up the warren sapp

tweet that he aired earlier talking about putting up a statue, he said the statue must go. warren sapp is a legendary nfl defensive player. the joe pa statue must come down but figuratively we can't look at him the same. the legacy is ruined. this is mr. integrity in college football a land that's not known for integrity. this is mr. i teach character to children who have the most stunning lapse of character in what would seem to be the most obvious situation but because he had so much power it was allowed to go on for so long. >> that's one thing that the report brought up was the culture of reverence and the report specifically addressed one of the things that needs to change at penn state is cultural. >> yeah. i speak as somebody who, from my personal perspective, you know, there was my top sporting interest my whole life was penn state football from the time i

was young until last october. >> has this changed it? >> it's gone completely. >> you won't watch the games any more. >> i'm hardly alone in this. we talk about what's the future of penn state football. can they even have a football program after this? at a certain point that's an academic question because for a lot of fans you can't cheer for them any more. you realize what you cheered for before isn't what you were cheering for. >> should the program be penalized. >> we can't make it academic. it is to be official. the death penalty has to come down from the ncaa. >> i know you disagree on this point but what has happened is the college football coaches on many campuses has become the most powerful person. other presidents and other universities have to have a chill sent down their spine if we allow this to go on this could happen to us. punishment is for the rest of the society. >> this is a horrible, horrible story. there's not a college president, a college athletic director or

college football coach in the country who does not already take the lesson from what's happened at penn state that their career, their reputation, their program and the university will be shattered if they conduct themselves at all like the most powerful at penn state did. >> understand. >> at a certain level we have to keep putting penalties on. >> the ncaa says you did nothing. you let penn state and lewis freeh handle this. you don't impose any penalty. >> the death penalty you talk about has been prescribed once in the history of college sports. smu, 1986. what you had was literally top to bottom. it went from the governor of the state to parents to businessmen to boosters to players to administrators to coaches to support staff. everybody was in on a payment scheme for players that lasted for years. it was a total football scandal. >> you think the folks that are culpable have been dismissed

they are now gone. >> you had some real bad characters here and the scope of this thing when you talk about the human tragedy you can't compare to it anything else. when you want to start talking -- i honestly believe the football players and the football program there's going a lot of damage to penn state. i don't think you need the death penalty on the of it. a lot of damage. joe paterno is gone. tim curley is never getting a job again. their careers are shattered. deservedly so. >> at this hour penn state board of trustees will respond. we'll have that when it begins at 3:30. up next our thursday presidential coverage here on "the cycle" continues. [ man ] ever year, sophia and i use the points we earn with our citi thankyou card for a relaxing vacation. ♪ sometimes, we go for a ride in the park.

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all right. here we are in the airily innings of the 2012 presidential race. we'll take thursdays for weekly assessment of where the race stands and since we're sort of at the start we'll call at any time segment the bottom of the first. so no matter which poll you look at it's a tight race. basically we're looking at a daddy heat. according to pollsters 10% of voters will be undecided between now and november and $10 billion spent to move those few people. let's look at it flas half empty. after three bad months of job figures and president can't crack that 50% approval mark

nervous republicans can't figure out why mitt romney isn't ahead. calls for shakeups in his campaign and he took a lot longer than he should have to beat a pretty weak primary field. his campaign had its share of missteps. how can the race still be tied. to continue our baseball analogy let's bring in dave. all that bad news, discouraging news for romney. if you're on the obama side your sitting there saying we should be ahead by a lot more right now? >> well, there are two different sets of numbers to be looked at. the head-to-head numbers, the national numbers he cited, 47-47, 47-46 within the margin of error all the way through fall. i would take issue, i think when you look at the battleground states, president obama is actually winning this race. it's not by much, but he's winning. you look at the battleground states that determine this election.

ohio, virginia, florida, colorado, i was looking at polling averages before i came on and president obama has a lead in all of these states. now, they are single digit leads. razor thin. volatile going through the months ahead. but right now i think he's winning this race based on the electoral college. remember president obama does not -- he can lose florida and ohio and win virginia and still wins the presidency. >> dave, let me take this from the other side, not surprisingly. how is obama doing this well? you know typically we don't re-elect president when is we're above 8% unemployment and i'll throw some stats up on the screen. 8.2% unemployment. real unemployment is 14.4. one sixth of the population is on food stamps. 61% of young adults know someone who has had to move back in with their parents. and american family net worth is down 40% since 2007. those are bad numbers.

so tell me, i'll ask it again. how is obama doing this well? >> well, the first thing is there's evidence already polling is showing that the obama attack machine is working. and that some of these attacks, particularly on romney's business experience, what he did at bain is showing in focus groups and some of these swing states is sticking with people, particularly in northern virginia. did this guy really outsource jobs? did he create jobs or outsource them? it's raising the question mark to someone they are not very familiar with yet already. remember a lot of voters, they are not like us, they are just tuning in and some of the first information they are being presented with are a barrage of pretty tough attacks by the obama administration, by the obama campaign has been pretty cut throat and the republicans argue this. romney isn't known yet. he still has room to grow. there's still people, again, not like us who follow this every day who are just tuning in and

trying to get a sense of who mitt romney is so i think he definitely has room to grow, but right now in this initial offering he's taking some hits. >> hasn't he been running for president for ten years now? >> obama is ahead by a little bit and why it is when you have over 8% unemployment. there's a couple of political scientists they went back 60 years and looked strictly at the economy. how did the economy do during a presidency. what they found is that through first three years of obama's term and presumably into the first few months of this year he was performing much better than any other president had just when you consider the economy and the theory they developed this is because of bush. this is because of the very unique circumstance of obama coming into office at the height of a massive economic meltdown that we hadn't seen in generations and people remembering when, where and how that meltdown started and who was president and obama is given the benefit of doubt. >> i think that's right.

the polling is showing people are giving the president the benefit of doubt and blaming bush. but there's two other things in the mix. people like the president. when you like someone you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. and the other thing is i think mitt romney is a particularly poor candidate to run at this time in this recession when people are concerned about income and equality. he is the per sopersonification where america is going. >> what will shift the race as we move into the later innings. what will get the undecideds off the couch. i figure sort of four variables. let me see if you can knock one down or say there are others that are missing. if the unemployment numbers change drastically up or down, if something draft happens in europe or a terrorist attack. if romney makes an inapplicable

gaffe like the fundamentals of the economy. now if romney is unmasked at the debates as not up to the level of obama, then that's going to be devastating for him and the debates are the one thing that we know will happen. the others are ifs. the debates must happen. that's when people will get off the couch or on the couch and pay attention to this thing. that will be dispositive. >> if some scandal about the administration should come out. let me put it to dave our color commentator. even race right now. what are the prospects now that either one much these guys pull away between now and november. >> very unlikely you'll see a blow-out one way or the other. the next big event is the conventions, late august, september. i think you'll see some movement towards obama after his, you know, speech and towards romney as we traditionally do but i also think the debates are going hugely critical for both candidates. both of these guys are cautious. they don't try to make gambles.

that's not in either of their personas. it's less likely earth of them make a mistake. but the question is if romney is down a couple of points or down in these polls, does he go for a bigger type of gamble in one of these begaits, sort of a knock out punch, tougher line of attack, those are southeast debates that will have to be had within the romney campaign. you know, if he's down going into the fall in those debates. >> dave, thank you very much for joining us. up next we're going inside president obama's inner circle. and best selling author and veteran editor james mann tells us what's going on. we're waiting for that news conference by the board of trustees to begin. stay with us here on "the cycle". >> time for your business entrepreneur of the week.

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ever since george mcgovern was dovish about vietnam there's a stereotype about all democrats

being foreign policy doves. republicans likes nixon and both bushes were elected because dems portrayed them soft on the gulf war. to supporters obama has destroyed that image. despite thanks to a steadfast disapproval of the iraq war, obama has shown himself to be a hawk, killing bin laden, aggressively hunting terrorists around the war. this is the first election in decades where the republicans cannot easily use foreign policy against the democrat. the challenge for bottom on foreign policy it's different. bill clinton's generation had come to take it for granted the u.s. was and would remain the world's dominant power. the obama generation saw itself as struggling to hold on to that designation for another few

decades. james, how does the obama white house work to maintain that position of united states in dominant position? >> i think it's trying to recast american foreign policy to emphasize military strength much less, after all military power had its limits in iraq. and trying to revive the american economy. so it's hard to separate foreign policy and domestic policy on that. >> you talk about at the end of the book as america was still the world's leader or is it in decline. you talk about we still the leading military power, largest economy, best colleges, the world's only superpower. are we still the world's leading nation or start took in decline. >> we're less powerful than we were. we're less of an economic power. we have a strong economy but, you know, american, whether it's diplomats or military leaders, if they are out in a region, some region of the world people who deal with asia say gees, we

don't have as much money to throw around in aid in places like say indonesia as the chinese do and in the middle east. we don't have as much money to throw around as the saudis do. our economic out is way down. >> james, i was wonder if you could kind of take us behind the curtain on two different decisions that this administration made. the first one was the decision not to get involved on behalf of the pro democracy movement in iran and the second was the decision to get involved in libya. how were those made and why did they go in different directions there? >> the main reason they went in different directions is they occurred at different times of the obama administration. the obama administration of course would like everybody to think it's been consistent right through but when it took office during its first year it really saw the cause of promoting democracy overseas as that was

george bush, it was something they didn't want to do. they were very reluctant to get involved in supporting hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in tehran. and then a year and a half later they turned around on egypt and so they were much more willing to support democratic forces. >> but, james, i think what crystal is getting at it's been hard to pin town the obama doctrine, and i want to bring up another example which is sir why by some accounts more than 13,000 people have died and some argue we haven't done enough there. president obama stood at the holocaust memorial museum in april and said about elie alluded to what we feel as we see the syrian people subjected to unspeakable violence simply for demanding their universal rights. and we have to do everything we can. the syrian people have not given up so therefore we can't give up. what do you make about his

decision on syria and what this administration is doing about syria right now? >> well what i think what you're asking is why it is different in syria, why don't we intervene where we incident libya and the answer to that, there's absolutely no difference in the moral situation, you know, large numbers of people are being killed in syria as in libya. the military situation is different. in libya you had gadhafi's forces on one side of the country and you had the opposition on the other and it was easy for the military to just block in advance from one side to the other. syria it's different. the security forces are all over the country. the opposition is all over the country. it's very, it's much, much harder to mount a military operation to protect civilians in syria. >> would you say it's mostly a case by case kind of foreign policy, which, you know, is fine but is that sort of the

overarcing obama doctrine, it's case by case? >> i would say the overarcing obama doctrine is to work in close collaboration with your allies. that's a difference from the bush administration. >> james, let me just ask you, when you talk about these decisions being made who are the people on the inside who really have obama's ear on this. when he has to make a tough decision who is he leading on foreign policy and national security? >> right. that's an interesting subject. the people you see outfront are hillary clinton and the defense secretary leon panetta and they are strong and important voice. but internally it's the people closest to obama on foreign policy, been there in many cases since the 2008 campaign. people, there's dennis mcdonough who is an enforcer for the administration making sure obama gets what he wants or the ideas guy, the words guy is a guy named ben with rhodes or

samantha power or susan rice, the u.n. ambassador. there are people who are less known than clintons and panetta. >> james i have to stop you for one second. the penn state conference is starting and we're going penn state. >> good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us today. my name is ken fraser. i chaired the special investigations task force. if there's one thing, one thing that should be abundantly clear it is that all responsible and caring adults have a fundamental responsibility to safeguard the children in their communities. this morning we received a report from judge lewis freeh. and we would like to thank judge freeh for his diligence in uncovering the facts over the past eight months and for issuing such a comprehensive and thorough report today.

without question, the process that we just underwent with judge freeh leeading it was critical for all of us if we need to move forward. we need to understand what happened, to hold the appropriate individuals responsible for their actions, and their failures to act, and identify the changes that need to be immediately addressed in our university community. let me be absolutely clear. an event like this can never happen again in the penn state university community. judge freeh's report is both sad and sobering. he made three clear points. first and foremost, we, the penn state board of trustees failed in our obligation to provide proper oversight of the university's operations.

to be absolutely clear again, we are accountable for what's happened here. our administrative leadership also failed. judge freeh's report concludes that at the moment of truth people who are in a position to protect children and to confront a predator, including people at the highest levels of responsibility in the university, specifically, graham spanier, joe paterno, tim curley and gary schultz did not put the welfare of children first. also and importantly on a personal level, you should know that our hearts remain heavy and we are deeply ashamed. over the last 14 years it

appears from the report that there have been three distinct phases of the board's involvement. as the report states the board was completely unaware of what was happening during the first phase from 1998 to march 2011. we now know that the there was inadequate reporting in fact but there were also inadequate reporting lines and also inadequate oversight by the board. we were put on notice of the attorney general's sandusky investigation in march of 2011. however, we allowed the former administration to characterize to us the issues and we failed to ask the right questions, the tough questions or to take definitive action. put simply we did not for the issue.

however, when the information about sandusky became more widely public in november 2011, we did take decisive actions involving judge freeh and his group as an independent third-party to launch a full scale investigation into the university and the individuals who may have been involved at every level from the top to the bottom. we also took action with respect to the individuals who were most centrally involved. finally, we also began identifying gaps in governance and implementing changes to strengthen our policies and procedures for the safety of children and our entire university community. this marks a new era for penn state. and for our board of trustees. with a mixture of humility and steadfastness, we pledge to work closely and cooperatively with

the administration in diligently facilitating open communication across all departments and levels of the university. that will be for the benefit of the children, that are on our campus and also be for the benefit of every part of the university. and with that, i'll turn the microphone over to our chairman of the board karen pets. >> thank you, ken. the board of trustees as a group that has paramount accountability for overseeing and ensuring the proper functioning and governance. university accepts full responsibility for the failures that occurred. the board in cooperation with the administration will take every action to ensure that an event like this never happens again. in our university community. i would like to reiterate that

we're grateful to judge freeh for his report and 119 recommendations. and we will be closely studying this document as we continue to push forward in identifying and implementing necessary changes across the entire university. since i stepped into the role of chair in january of 2012 with the help of my board colleagues we've made significant improvements in our structure and university oversight. we're implementing specific oversight committees such as risk, audit, legal, compliance, governance, academic excellence and human resources. tomorrow we'll be voting on several new governance initiatives. and for the sake of our students

best interest, we must remain intimately aware of and closely engaged with the university's administration. to this end, we've already begun interacting more closely with members of the president's council, faculty, staff, students, alumni and within our committee meetings. we will also continue to seek future opportunities to facilitate these relationships. in addition, we're going to set up some very high goals for ourselves. we must become a best in class standard in board governance. and we will keep judge freeh's recommendations as our north tar throughout this process. and above all, we must restore trust in our community. we don't expect it to happen overnight. we will earn it back. as we move forward and develop a culture of transparency and

accountability. and now i would like to turn the podium over to rod ericson, our president. >> thank you, karen. i too was horrified when i learned of the sandusky allegations last year and as i watched the process unfold it's become clear to me i need to reconsider our community's leadership culture. since i assumed the office of president last november i have committed myself and my administration to addressing this important issue. as karen noted, my administration has begun to work with the board of trustees more collaboratively and productively than any administration in our recent history. we're looking forward to continuing to develop these relationships to facilitate healthy and productive communications and shared accountability between the two. in addition, i have assembled an

administrative leadership team charged with developing and implementing an action plan "atlantis" lates judge freeh's recommendation into a comprehensive program for the university. the team is composed of the vice president for administration, senior vice president for finance and business, and pending approval of the board tomorrow as our new vice president and general counsel. the plan will take a few weeks to appropriately research, develop and approve but we will provide details as they become available. while in no way lessening our focus on our own failings, we also are committed to helping to build greater awareness of the societal issue of child abuse. we are partnering with the pennsylvania coalition against rape and hatch created the center for the protection of children at the hershey medical

center. penn state university intends to be a constructive leader in prevent, reporting and responding to such abuse. this is a problem that plagues our nation and we have a special duty to increase awareness, prevention, and treatment of child sexual abuse. with today's report, we can continue the process of addressing the most painful chapter in the university's history. my door is open and i'm going to be very visible in our community in the coming months. we must work together as we begin picking up the pieces and rebuilding our community to ensure it is safer, stronger, and more student focused than ever. as the freeh report notes, penn state quote is an outstanding institution. nationally renowned for its excellence in academics and research unquote.

we are rightly proud of the many significant accomplishments of our faculty, staff, students and alumni. we also remain proud of the accomplishments and state student athletes over many years. and we reaffirm the fundamental premise that academic excellence and athletic achievement are wholly consistent and complementary goals. penn state is a leading institution of public higher education in the world. that will remain young changunc. with the help of our faculty, student and alumni penn state's best days are in front of us. penn state will emerge from this as an even stronger and better institution. and now i'll turn the podium back to karen to direct questions. >> thank you. thanks, ron. >> do the other members of the board intend to resign?

>> we're not intending to resign. we believe that we have natural kind of evolution of the board by the fact that many new members join every year. we think that consistency is important. and we think that many of the things that we just talked about that are needed to strengthen the university and strengthen the future of the board are already in process. >> you talked about rebuilding trust in the community. >> yes. >> would resigning be a big step towards that. >> we believe the stability of the university and what's important is that we now really get going on what needs to be done. we think that by taking the accountability that we just said that we own that that's the first step. and now we have to follow it through and implement as effectively as we can, as quickly as we can. >> are you horrified -- the president said he was horrified by the allegations when they came, when it first broke back last year. >> yes. >> your not horrified today by

what judge freeh had said about what happened at this university and its inability to protect children? >> absolutely. absolutely. we're horrified. we're saddened. we are -- there are not enough superlative words to use. >> a letter that was revealed by freeh says that steve garvin was questioning senior leadership about what was going on campus and it clearly showed he knew of something. >> i think that as ken tried to go through the timeline of what we knew when, i think that the first mistake as was already mentioned was not paying enough attention the articles that came out back in march of 2011. so it started from there. >> [ inaudible ] >> the report is new.

we're just seeing it. we saw it for the first time today. you can be sure we'll be digesting further below the four people who were already named who knew what. >> another question. should joe paterno still be honored. >> that was penn state responding to the worst scandal in sports history that goes beyond sports into legality, masculinity, the abuse of power and left many lives destroyed. tissue of joe paterno's legacy being destroyed is minimal by comparison. steve this is personal four as a long time penn state fan, now ex-penn state fan, now hearing them respond after judge freeh's report how do you feel now >> a lot of people that admired paterno through the years. he was somebody who transcended his sport. he was the symbol of the good side of sports for some years. so me, you know, i recognize at the beginning of paterno's response had been not ideal to put it mildly.

as a long time paterno fan it took me a while even recognizing the horror of the story to get to the point where i'm now at. >> you can't admire him any more. >> this is the nail in the coffin with that incident where he apparently talked tim curley out of going authorities. >> let's bring in executive editor at "sports illustrated" and si.com. joe paterno's legacy was sterling, most admired and respected college coach maybe in college football history and ncaa history. where do we think about him now? >> well, i think you can't help but read this report and look at this whole sordid scandal and not come way with his legacy is forever tarnished. the important thing here is this goes way beyond joe paterno. back in november many people who looked at this objectively knew that joe paterno had failed. he did not fulfill his duty. but here with this report this goes way beyond joe paterno,

this is a culture that allowed this to happen and hurt so many children and people at the highest levels of the university felt and failed miserably. we know of the four but it goes way beyond them and from the president an down it just unconscionable what happened. >> guys, when we were watching that press conference we saw karen peepts who is the chairman of the board of trustees, she ticked off about half a dozen new committees that they were going form, right. is that really the issue? there was a lack of bureaucracy? what happened happened behind closed doors in shadows and what happened is sandusky was a monster and his buddies allowed him to be. this is an issue of character and not bureaucrat circumstance right? >> it's an issue -- to be fair they have to do something. they have to take some actual concrete steps to show we understand the situation i want to address it. but i think you're absolutely

right. the issue is not that there was a lack of committees and, you know, one quote from the report that really struck me is they said one of the most challenging of the tasks confronting the penn state community is transforming the culture that permitted sandusky's behavior and i think that's the question, has that culture changed and what will they do to be able to change it. >> b.j., death penalty for penn state yes nor. >> no, i don't think this is a football issue. this goes way beyond a football issue. this is a university issue and cultural issue. >> we'll have much more on this when we come right back.

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we continue talking about what we heard from the penn state board of trustees reacting to the scathing report. one of the things that jumped out at me is that joe paterno in 2001 hears from mcqueary on a saturday that something horrific happened between sandusky and a boy. paterno already knew from 1998 that there was a lot of smoke there and followed that investigation. he hears from mcqueary on a saturday cht doesn't call his superiors until sunday because he didn't want to quote disturb their weekend. this is stunning failure of judgment on a person, from a person who was mr. character. >> and that's, i think that's just the half of it because what we're seeing in this report today and i want to ask b.j. about this if i could, a few weeks after that, the other high

ups at penn state decided they were going to go to the authorities with this. and in this report, it said they decided at the end of the week. curley goes over the week to meet are paterno, comes back and goes to spanier and says i've changed my mind. the humane thing to do would be to offer sandusky help and not report to the authorities. we don't know in the report what paterno said to curley and whose idea this was, but is there any way to read that that is not just totally damning? >> if you read deeply in the report, paterno knew in 1998 these initial allegations of abuse in the shower. he was asked about it. he actually inquired through curley and said coach wants to know what is up with the situation? so, he knew back then and hearing this information only should have validated and confirmed it for him and act

swiftly, it was just a complete failure on his part. a failure from beginning an at the end. >> and thest the abuse of power that we've been referencing that this college coach was the most powerful man in the entire university so when he says let's not send him to state authorities, they listen. >> that's one of the things i've been thinking about a lot because the men named here by all accounts in other aspects of their lives were moral men. they were doing good things in their community. they were known for their character and their judgment. and you just look at this situation and you go how did they get it so wrong? how did they get the priorities so out of whack that to your point, he would find out about this on a saturday and prioritize the weekend -- >> the quality of other people's weekends. >> over -- wanting to ask b.j. another question. more about sandusky because one

thing that was unusual, i was at uva when he interviewed for a coaching job there he didn't get and it was strange that after such a successful career at penn state, he clearly wanted to coach elsewhere and never was able to get hired. were there rumors or rumblings at that time? what was the the justification in their minds? >> i think you can't help think now knowing what we know, there were rumors and people talk. we know from this report that back in '98, there was an allegation. that the college football community, especially the coaching community is a close knit, closed community. everybody talks. if tl a whiff of this, it's going to be out there. people knew there was something off with this guy. whether it was to that level, i don't know. whether somebody like uva would know that. >> that means that this goes beyond penn state. what you're implying is that other coaches around the country

knew something and didn't raise this. >> obviously, if you're going to talk about hiring jerry sandusky, you're going to call joe paterno, who they all know. >> george welsh, the coach at virginia, retiring coach when sandusky interviewed for the uva position, they go back together a long ways. it always was weird that sandusky at the age of 50, recognized as the best defensive coordinator in the country, the guy who made linebacker and randomly at 54, reretired. that seems strange. i always wonder if paterno used the pretense of i'm not going to let me succeed me as a catholic cardinal would move a priest around. >> when they call paterno, what do you think about the guy and he's kind of waffling and say, you ought to stay away from this guy. >> all right. we're going to take a quick break.

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that does it for "the cycle." dr. dyson, also nice to see you. >> always great to see you. "the cycle" is doing a great, bang up job. >> thank you much. >> good afternoon. i'm sitting in for martin bashir on a busy thursday, july 12th. and we will have the latest on the penn state response, but we begin with much more back and forth over bain and after weeks of being pulmoledded by the obama campaign, mitt romney is

taking conservatives' much offered advice and hitting back with a new ad, calling the president a liar. >> the obama outsourcing attacks. misleading, unfair and untrue. there was no evidence that mitt romney shipped jobs overseas. obama's dishonest campaign. another reason america has lost confidence in barack obama. >> now in a bit of incredibly inconvenient truth for mitt romney, new reports suggest he has been less than truthful about when he left bain capital. he has claimed he broke from bain in february 1999 to defend himself from charges he laid off workers and outsourced jobs overseas, but new reports are making waves on a "boston globe" piece today, finding that romney was listed as bain's sole stockholder, chairman of the board, ceo and president. on sec filings into 2002. the romney campaign has

responded in a statement, quote, the article is not accurate. as bain has said, as governor romney has said and had been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple time, bain left in february of 1999 to run the limb p picks and had input on magt of companies after that point. but hang on. what was it romney said yesterday about responding in politics? >> i respond to the attacks that come, they say in politics, if you're responding, you're losing. >> let's get right to our panel including the man who had the early jump on the story, david corn with us from washington, d.c. and also joining us here in new york, charles blow. david, you've been one of the first to report on this back at the beginning of the month in mother jones. and you found romney's break with bain wasn't so clean, but how dirty are the details really? >> well, you know, they keep trying to set up t